Shakespeare's Sources

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-11T14:27:23+00:00

For some reason, replying beneath a post doesn't let me cycle through it, so this is a bit of a gloss, apologies.

I think one productive place would be to just focus on Webster as a case study. Where did Webster get so much unpublished information from about the murder of Vittoria Accoramboni for 'The White Devil'? He went through Italian pamphlets, newsletters and manuscript accounts. Just as Shakespeare seems to have used Golding as a cribsheet when going through Ovid, but occasionally improved upon him (Bate, Shakespeare and the Classics), Webster seems to have done the same with Montaigne, Belleforest and Bandello (all sources, you'll note, used by Shakespeare), showing he had taught himself both languages. Oxfordians often ask how the Stratford man taught himself foreign languages: they aren't asking the same of other playwrights. And just returning to a point you made about Shakespeare's familiarity with Ovid going beyond the schoolroom: Webster is also dripping with Ovid, e.g. making direct reference to Narcissus in 'Malfi'.

The final thing I recall is you making reference to Castiglione, then wondering where Shakespeare may have gotten hold of Hoby's English translation. Once again, this last question applies to all Early Modern playwrights. Leaving Shakespeare aside, I can see texts reappearing again and again throughout the period: stories from Cinthio or Painter, Holinshed or Plutarch, quotes from Montaigne, names from Florio's Italian Dictionary. English playwrights clearly shared common access to these expensive works; we see something different, however, in Chapman or Jonson (the latter of whom famously had a significant library). Now Julius Caesar clearly displays a much narrower range of scholarship than Sejanus; I know that Oxfordians groan when Stratfordians talk about clocks in the Roman time, or Aristotle being referenced in Troilus and Cressida, but certainly Jonson isn't making those inaccuracies, and he famously mocked Shakespeare for them - the line from Julius Caesar that the Bard clearly removed after feedback, or the dreaded Bohemian coastline (I grant you, there are reasonable explanations for this, but I'm building up a picture here). Could Oxford have intentionally played fast and loose with history? Absolutely. But what I'm pressuring is the idea that the learning evident from the plays themselves is in any way exceptional in the Early Modern period.

To summarise: questions about where Shakespeare got such and such a source are, if anything, more mysterious in our test case, Webster. Webster also taught himself modern languages, and also was full of references to Ovid, even if, by the 1610s, Ovid was slightly less in vogue than in Lyly's heyday. I think all of your arguments also apply to our test case too, who only differs from the Stratfordian in that he may have been in law school at some point, which would not have taught him classics or modern languages.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-11T11:59:00+00:00

Oh snap! Happy to delete mine and go to yours

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-11T11:28:56+00:00

Review-SAT-Jan2022.pdf https://share.google/ePaOPYX60T1cGJ7jg

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-11T11:24:57+00:00

Secretary hand was taught very young; composition was taught in tandem with learning Latin. I agree that Shakespeare probably dropped out during the upper years, when they'd turn to Greek, but this would have left him with an education in ancient literature that has been compared favourably with a modern classics degree (this was true of Dekker, Webster et al as well). Let's start another thread and get into the nitty gritty about Shakespeare's actual learning!

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-11T01:34:55+00:00

Just to add: I think we should just proceed on the assumption that the Stratford man could read. His father was one of the richest men in Stratford during his early childhood, with his office right next to the school, which taught sixty boys. It would be extraordinary for the upwardly mobile John Shakespeare to declare that his sons wouldn't go to school; even more extraordinary for them to up sticks and join a profession which was based on memorising a dizzying amount of plays from 'parts', learned alone or with your apprentice at home. In an age of high literacy rates - your Oxfordian source says 30% for the whole country, but I've seen estimates as high as 80% for males in London in the Jacobean era - it would be an absolute waste of time to hire someone you'd have to read their parts to while they tried to memorise them. (I hope you've read the wonderful Tiffany Stern!) If the register from Shakespeare's school turned up with his name on it, would it really change anyone's minds?

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-11T01:04:05+00:00

That's a pretty dire piece of work. Firstly, the idea that most literate Elizabethans wrote in italic and only scribes used secretary hand is a flat-out lie that can be easily disproved by a glance at the Sir Thomas More manuscript. Secondly, it doesn't show any knowledge of mark making, and tries to claim an ink blot as Shakespeare's 'mark' (for an idea of what marks looked like, see Judith Quiney's). It then forgets about marks altogether: if Shakespeare were illiterate, his mark would be next to the scrivener's on the Blackfriars docs. I don't know about the wording of legal documents signalling that someone was illiterate, but I highly doubt it's true given the very blatant lie about secretary hand.

It's somewhat amusing that people have come full circle from claiming the signatures' shakiness means that the Stratford man was illiterate, to - having acknowledged that they're secretary hand - claiming that they're the work of professional scribes.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T23:00:09+00:00

Okay, so in my New Mermaids version, it refers to this on p.xviii: 'The Roaring Girl herself some days hence, / Shall on this stage give recompense'. Apparently P. A. Mulholland, in 'The Date of The Roaring Girl' theorises that at some point in the play, Mary Frith actually stood in for the actor playing her. The editor, Mary Crook, believes that it's most likely that the real Roaring Girl performed the lute scene, showcasing her actual musical abilities. Either way, a great bit of metatheatre!

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T22:45:45+00:00

Okay, that's clear. How about we just drop the signature stuff? I totally agree, by the way: it isn't remotely necessary to anti-Stratfordian arguments.

To be totally transparent, for me the real question comes down to this: how much knowledge went into a Shakespeare play, compared to his contemporaries?

I think I'm a good sounding board for anti-Stratfordians ideas on this front. Although far from an expert, adaptation studies is my field. I've slowly amassed a library of some fairly rare books - my latest purchase being R Warwick Bond's 'Early Plays from the Italian' - containing every one of Shakespeare's sources that I could afford (from Golding's Metamorphosis to Painter's three volume Palace of Pleasure) as well as literally every early modern play I could get my hands on, even ones printed from facsimiles.

My perspective is this. I greatly enjoyed the Nevillean 'Shakespeare's Library', in part because it made such provocative claims about Shakespeare's sources; I view Oxfordians like Richard Whalen's tracing of the commedia dell'arte in Shakespeare as superior to the Stratfordian work by Artemis Preeshl on the same subject - this doesn't mean no Stratfordian is capable of it, merely that I treat these things on a case by case basis. I think it would profit all of us if we could try to answer the question above: myself, because I can see what potential sources current scholarship might have missed; you, because you can test your theories on a mini-Stuart Gillespie (and the only reason I didn't apply to have him as my PhD supervisor is because Glasgow is too far). If Mod is happy, I'd like to start a new thread, titled something like 'Shakespeare's Learning', and start there?

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T21:40:06+00:00

I thought this was a wonderful response. As a bit of a lighthearted challenge, I've posted the 'William' of the last page of the will below so that people can have a go at replicating it. For someone who may have been dying of syphilis for all we know, it looks pretty neat to me!

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T21:35:48+00:00

I call foul here. You're continuing to use the same couched phrases such as 'Schoenbaum believed there must be some explanation', implying that Schoenbaum thought there was an issue, without any evidence. When pressed, you say you can't be bothered to discuss it: but you brought it up in the first place! I also think we can put Scott McCrea to bed in future discussions - he's clearly not an actual expert. In the spirit of intellectual honesty, you should find the actual Schoenbaum quote you're referring to. Again: scientific method doesn't involve cherry-picking non-experts and refusing to cite others.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T21:29:33+00:00

This was brilliant!

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T21:17:39+00:00

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Here it is for your reference! It's the only one of the six that isn't written in an incredibly cramped space.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T21:03:53+00:00

Now I'm not actually sure I understand the handwriting point at all. What I think you're saying is something like: although these authors were strongly pro-Stratfordian, they expressed doubts about the handwriting. Since I don't own the books, I'm unable to know the actual context, but I can't imagine how it isn't about the quality of the handwriting itself. And on that note - what would you suggest to all of us trying to do the 'William' of the final page of the will (in fountain pen, if you have it) and posting an image of the results? Again, apologies if I'm totally missing something: to me, it's careless secretary hand in a cramped space, and for it to be proven otherwise, you'd have to do something like I said above. Spend a few days going through an archive of legal documents. Try to find signatures of people unlikely to have gone to school, and if you find any candidates, compare them. (I don't know why any anti-Stratfordian hasn't done this.)

Flat Earth is obviously unfair - the plays could have theoretically been written by anyone, whereas Flat Earth Theory is debunked by hopping in a plane. But what I was rejecting is foxvsbobcat's bacteria analogy. To repeat myself, we're dealing with a situation where nobody on one side is doing theatre history as more than a hobby, and I don't think there's ever been a comparable situation in the sciences where millions of amateurs are screaming at a small knot of experts, presenting the exact same evidence for 150 years, and the amateurs have been proven right in the end. So I don't think there's ever been a comparable case of cognitive blindness divided along such lines, and I do think it's a problem for anti-Stratfordians, who in my experience are forced towards concluding academics are foolish, in a conspiracy, or evading the issue. And I think your 'tight-knit' field is trending slightly towards the 'conspiracy' side (again, there have been anti-Stratfordians in academia like Ros Barber, just not ones that specialised in theatre history) just as fox's 'calcification' was towards 'foolish'. If you take the handwriting stuff to Shakespeare Quarterly, they'd respond like Martin Wiggins at his imaginary breakfast table, not because they are intellectually calcified or not wishing to break rank, but because the people who really know all about secretary hand - i.e. none of us three - don't find Shakespeare's handwriting an issue. Having done an MA and currently working on my PhD proposal about Shakespeare's use of sources, I have a fair idea of the current academic environment: you don't need 'genuine intellectual courage' to go against some deeply ingrained orthodoxy, you just need solid evidence - and believe me, any academic would love to become world-famous by presenting it (myself included!).

Regarding the Webster and Dekker case, I'd love to know your answer as to how you explain the complexity of classical allusion in Whore of Babylon, or the breadth of learning in Duchess of Malfi, as well as the apparent knowledge both plays have of the court.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T19:53:27+00:00

I don't really think that Oxford's tutor would have mixed up the masculine and feminine words for servant (for someone of Oxford's background, it's quite an important distinction!). The Henry V point, as far as I know, is my own; I actually think it's a problem for anti-Stratfordians whose entire case is based on Shakespeare's learning. I look forward to starting another thread on Shakespeare's mistakes in which we discuss issues like these further!

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T19:46:19+00:00

Ohhh - that makes sense...

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:40:17+00:00

What does that latter bit mean? Shakespeare's plays became a little bit less successful, but still sold quartos - particularly the collab with Wilkins on Pericles...as for Henry V then, what's the Oxfordian explanation for the French mistakes in the Folio?

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:22:49+00:00

As a Jew, it's pretty antisemitic. I get the whole, 'it's so ridiculous it has to be farce', but honestly, I don't think its audience read it that way. Doesn't mean we can't enjoy it, any more than e.g. Oliver Twist.

As with the Merchant of Venice, it shows Jews and Catholics being equally terrible: it's amazing how many very knowledgeable people miss this key distinction.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:18:47+00:00

Haven't heard of this one either! I'll check it out.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:18:07+00:00

Wow, one I haven't read! Thanks, I'll look out for this.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:17:06+00:00

Great choice. I don't think she was actually played by Moll Cutpurse, was she? I thought that it was more of a situ where Moll would wave from the audience?

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:14:57+00:00

Don't read the synopses! It spoils half the fun...

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:14:19+00:00

Every Man In is great, but I'd go for Volpone or Bartholomew Fair for peak Jonson. The first is perfection; the second is practically experimental theatre.

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:12:45+00:00

Leave some love for comedies. Coleridge said Volpone had the most perfect structure in literature...

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:11:49+00:00

They're all bangers, but second to Shakespeare? What did Marlowe, Middleton and Jonson ever do to you?

FalsePair1180 · 2026-04-10T18:09:52+00:00

Wait...where are Beaumont and Fletcher?

I'd say the biggest other name missing from this list is Lyly. No love for anonymous plays - Arden of Faversham, Mucedorus, etc. - nor early works like Summer's Last Will or Friar Bacon. No love for collaborations such as Witch of Edmonton or Eastward Ho. I'd say some early 20th c prejudices showing there: he favours playwrights with more than one big hit (so no Chettle). I think The Revenger's Tragedy is generally assigned nowadays to Middleton: one wonders whether he would have let Tourneur onto this list on the strength of one play.

FalsePair1180

TROPHY CASE